A important point is missed by this article .
The expense of incarceration is detracting from our ability to provide an education to non offenders.It costs $60,000 to house a prisoner for a year , and it costs about the same to hire a teacher. The million it costs to house a prisoner for 20 years is so much better spent in so many ways. Prison is an industry ,not so much a public service.Inmates should be allowed to work for their restitution and freedom,and get an education to rejoin a productive community; rather than burden society further.

Dr. Mac Donald: Excellent article. If these releases are to happen, I wonder why no one seems to be discussing age as a major criterion for selecting who will be released. Am I not correct that violent crime rates drop to near zero for the above-50 crowd? Seems that recidivism rates are also much lower.

Sometimes "posession" is merely the result of plea-bargaining down from DRUG-DEALING gangbanger. Other times, it's all that the police could legitimately get enough evidence on to put away a violent criminal. Just because the charges seem non-violent doesn't mean these aren't serious criminals.

Dr. Mac Donald: As always, your grounded in reality and academic expertise shine through on social problems. I am a retired social worker in corrections mental health. I ran groups with parolees and it was illu7minative to me that it was hard going to prison for career criminals. All kinds of deals struck from arrest to final adjudication and then still more breaks.

I totally agree with your assessment of the consequences implied in releasing thousands of inmates to the streets. Many will NOT find suitable jobs (especially now in our depressed economy) and will return to doing crimes.

Being Latino myself and a student of the Mexican drug cartels, I am most concerned with the Latino prison inmates who are members of prison gangs like the Mexican Mafia (La Eme)... some of these characters will return to crime...they have no choice under the blood-in-blood-out ethos.

Releasing sociopaths confirmed gang members and career criminals early is a big mistake.

Thanks for your article!

Release the prisoners into Georgetown neighborhoods or where-ever 5 of the 9 justices live.

What a bad precedent the Court has set. It is certainly going to be interesting. Where are the victims in all this? I'd like some of the people released to be moved to half way houses right next to some of the Judges who voted for this.

As if there weren't enough, we now have another reason to avoid California.

Pretty soon California is going to look like Manhattan in the dystopic movie Escape From New York.

End prohibition! One third of the prison population are in for non-violent possession. Most of the violent offenders or thieves are addicts who need a fix. Your only tool is a hammer and to you, everything looks like a nail.

I think the last sentence is an excellent idea. I wish judges could be held responsible for their actions which can lead to communities being terrorized. What would happen if the state told them to shove it? Which maybe they should.

Surprisingly, she failed to mention that most of Cali's felons are non white. When they are released, they will do their part to help dismantle lingering systemic bias and institutional racism by voting multiple times for non white candidates, as well as committing more crime against White Humanity.


We deserve the assaults, because we haven't done enough to atone for the sins of segregation by holding ourselves accountable to people of color for our unearned White privileges.

Who no longer holds on to their White privilege? Eve Carson, Ann Pressely, and Channon Christian, and all the other White girls murdered by African "Americans".

Social justice comes at a cost, but time for the incarcerated to stop paying the price and start getting back what's been taken from them.